KT Tunstall is a sparkling new songwriter with Chinese blood, a Scottish heart, great legwarmers and a cool name who celebrates classic singer-songwriting with an articulate, accessible, immediate brew of rootsy sass, wistful quandary and after-hours atmosphere. more...

KT Tunstall is a sparkling new songwriter with Chinese blood, a Scottish heart, great legwarmers and a cool name who celebrates classic singer-songwriting with an articulate, accessible, immediate brew of rootsy sass, wistful quandary and after-hours atmosphere. more...

KT Tunstall is a sparkling new songwriter with Chinese blood, a Scottish heart, great legwarmers and a cool name - "well, it's got a bit more attitude than Kate which just says farmer's daughter to me," she laughs.

She grew up in the university town of St Andrew's ("beautiful
but sheltered, a little bubble"), always knowing she
had been adopted at birth. "I grew up knowing I could
have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious
and your imagination go wild." Her debut album Eye To
The Telescope is the creative consequence of that inquiring
imagination.

KT spent her childhood up hills and under canvas with her
outward-bound parents. Music was never really part of the
equation until her older brother discovered the joys of hair
metal. "I would sit outside his room and record his music
through his door."

Her
first album was the Neverending Story soundtrack, but her favourite,
reassuringly, is David Bowie's Hunky Dory. "Its sound really
touched my love for songwriting and spacey stuff," she says.
"I was really into sci-fi books as a kid. My dad is a physicist
and he used to take my brothers and I into his lab when we were
little. We played games with liquid nitrogen and Van de Graaff
generators. He had the keys to the observatory at St. Andrew's
University and he'd get us up in the middle of the night to show
us Halley's Comet. That's partly why the album is called Eye
To The Telescope."

The young active KT took up piano, then flute and gradually
her singing voice developed its earthy individuality, "I'm
pretty certain that I learned how to sing because someone
gave me an Ella Fitzgerald tape - she was my singing teacher."

By her mid-teens, KT had started writing her own songs, "but
I was just coming out with this schmaltzy love nonsense. It
was a complete vomit of puppy love. But I thought I was rocking."
At 16, she took up the guitar, teaching herself from a busker's
book. Schmaltz was junked; a musical epiphany ensued.

Hungry for experiences and independence, she gained a scholarship
to Kent School in Connecticut, New England and absorbed gigs
by The Grateful Dead and 10,000 Maniacs. She also formed her
first band, The Happy Campers, and played a host of informal
gigs. "By the second week of playing an open mic slot
I was their 'special guest from Scotland!'," she recalls.

Next
stop on her personal odyssey was a music course at Royal Holloway
College, where she tried and failed to form another band. "I
managed to win Battle Of The Bands with one mandolin player! It
was me and eleven goth bands and I won."

After vanquishing the goths, KT returned to St Andrews and became
immersed in the grassroots scene which spawned The Beta Band and
the Fence Collective, forming a group with Fence's Pip Dylan and
honing her tastes with an ambrosial diet of James Brown, Lou Reed,
Billie Holliday, Johnny Cash and PJ Harvey.

Related Links

Visit our CD store
at Amazon, and find music like KT Tunstall, and other XPN
Artists. Your purchase that starts here supports WXPN public
radio.

A few years and bands later, it was crunch time for Tunstall.
She hit London again where, finally, things started to fall
into place. Working relationships were forged, deals were
secured. She began writing projects with Swedish songwriter/producer
Martin Terefe and London-based Orcadian Jimmy Hogarth and
London's Tommy D. With over a hundred songs in her pocket,
set to work on her debut album with her new band and legendary
U2/New Order/Happy Mondays producer Steve Osborne at the helm.

The lo-fi, visceral, boot-wielding approach was inspired
by KT's recent conversion to the hiss and crackle of early
blues. "On the whole, I'm a positive, skippity-la-la
person but I love the dark side of music and I will always
want to explore that. It's a positive-sounding album but there's
stuff underneath for sure."

Since
completing Eye To The Telescope, life has been a blur of gigs,
first as support to Joss Stone, then a tour of Europe, singing
with 'klezmer hip-hop' band Oi Va Voi, who ignited the Avalon
Stage at Glastonbury.

"It was blazing sunshine and I went on in a turquoise
neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the
best gig, really emotional. I've had emails from people saying
that they cried. They promised it wasn't the drugs."

Now KT is raring to channel all her infectious energies into
her own music. "I'm not exactly sure what has driven
me so hard," she says. "I've never questioned it.
I've never had a back-up plan. I was never going to do anything
else."